


Rise and Shine

by smallprotector



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: 5+1 structure, Baking bread, Bread, Found Family, Gen, Isolation, Loneliness, Mentions of Caduceus' family, Mentions of Death, he lives in a graveyard so..., mentions of disordered eating, more or less
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 07:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21157814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallprotector/pseuds/smallprotector
Summary: Caduceus loves baking bread. It makes him feel close to the Wildmother and lets him nourish his friends and family. But when dough doesn't rise, he finds himself wondering what he did wrong.(Or, 5 times Caduceus' bread doesn't rise and one time he actually asked what was up with that instead of assuming)





	Rise and Shine

Caduceus was the one that baked the bread. He was good at it, and over the years it had become his task. His father had taken him aside one day while the others were burying someone lost far too young. Caduceus and the other small ones were still kept inside for funerals like these- not because they didn’t know how to act around the grieving, but because experience had shown that parents bereft so soon were often saddened rather than comforted by the reminder of what they had lost. 

So here him and his siblings were, all being put to work helping in the kitchen (or rather, “helping”- the Clays believed that busy children were at least slightly less likely to get up to mischief, so even if they were no help at all, they were still encouraged to pick herbs or get rid of weeds, and if they did not know the difference- well, everyone learned eventually. Or not.).

Amidst all of this, Caduceus still managed to sneakily sprinkle flour into his younger brother’s hair until his father called him over. 

“Caduceus, sunflower, want to learn how to make bread?” 

Caduceus ran over, excited. He loved bread- but he’d never seen it grow from any plant! And now he would learn how it was made! 

And so, Caduceus listened with patience that was still so new to his family, used to seeing him flit and run from person to place as fast as his little legs could carry him. When his father mentioned that he found this to be a form of personal worship for the Wildmother, Caduceus’ ears perked up visibly- so far, he had only ever heard faint whispers when he really tried to pray for good harvests and more of those little rosehips that could be used as itching powder. He still remembered her laugh at that last silent request, so warm and loving. And when the bread he had helped bake was finished and all of his loved ones tried some, he felt the same warmth- and he was certain the Wildmother was smiling down at him. After all, the bread had risen- and wasn’t that a miracle? 

The first time the bread went wrong, it hardly mattered. How could it, with all his family around him, making suggestions about what might have gone wrong and how he could improve it next time. It didn’t feel like a failure with them around him. It was all fine, even if there was one tiny voice at the back of his head telling him the Wildmother must be angry at him. (And when that evening, alone in his bed, it mattered a lot more- he knew he could make it better, next time. He already decided that the next day he would spend an extra hour tending to some plants that were being neglected after his oldest bother left, just to show his goddess that he had understood expected more from him.) 

The second time, the house was already emptying, echoes in the hall instead of voices. Caduceus had taken to talking to himself more and more to cover up the quiet the was creeping as surely as the Darkness was creeping along the edges of the forest. 

He had prepared the dough as usual that day, and hadn’t even noticed when the volume didn’t increase the way it should when he left it to rest twice. He had people to play pranks on after all- even if Clarabell pretended to be mad at him, she had to know by now that fruits he offered her with his angelic smile were the tartest ones he could get his hands on. But either way, having her chase after him to take at least a bite of the horribly sour was the best part.

But now, the bread was done, and it was as flat as the wooden grave markers they set up before they carved the ones of stone. 

“Don’t worry, you can be hard tack. That’s what adventurers eat right? We can be pirates, just for a few days, till you’re gone.” 

The idea caught Caduceus’ fancy, and for the next few days, he wore the oversized belt left behind by his father, with some billowing white shirts from his older brother. To really complete the theme, he coaxed some flowers into blooming in a shape that seemed a bit like a parrot. His mother had laughed and ruffled his hair (it had turned pink just last summer, and everyone still left had cooed over the colour, telling him it was bright with promise and potential and a sign of favour from Her) before joining in. And somehow, that wasn’t as bad. If he spent the pirate days, as he called them, waking up earlier to tend to the garden, that was nobody’s business but his own. 

The third time he was alone. And distraught. He’d kneaded the dough. He’d added water until the consistency was just right, neither too sticky nor too dry. He’d let it rest for a bit near the hearth, chatting to it about which families were giving particularly interesting blends (the Moores had become quite minty lately, as sharp and refreshing as the woman he’d buried some time ago (how much time, he could not tell anymore, not all alone with no one else to remind him)).

And yet… 

The dough did not rise. 

“That’s not very nice,” Caduceus said, to the dough so he wasn’t only talking to himself. His voice rumbled through his chest, shocking in how viscerally he felt that simple sensation. It was one of the few ways he still felt connected to the world nowadays. 

Not sure what to do, he poked the dough again. “Will you be alright if I just let you rise for a bit? I can leave and do something else. Yeah, I think that might help. It’s okay if you’re shy, you know. Lots of things are. Don’t worry, I’ll be back later. And I’m sue you’ll have risen after that.” 

Caduceus left, allowing mindless tasks to busy him as he picked and dried leaves and flowers from various graves while picking of some lichen growing over the older gravestones. He didn’t want their names to be forgotten too soon, after all. But when he came back, the dough still hadn’t risen, no bubbles forming where they should have. 

“Alright, it looks like you’re not going to be doing that any time soon. That’s okay! I understand. Some days getting up is hard, yeah? I understand. If- hey, if it’s something I did I’ll try hard not to do it again. Sorry, that won’t help you much but- hard tack. Someone eats that. I forgot who but- there was someone.”

And so he ate his bread, hard and strangely flavourless, and every bite felt like someone else’s disappointment. But unlike when he was a child, he had nothing more to offer his deity- there were no more duties he could take over, and he was already teetering on the edge of being overwhelmed with all the things he felt he had to do every day. All he could do was apologise, when the silent disapproval got to be too much. 

What else did She want? What was he doing wrong? That’s what he really wanted to as but- how could he ask that of the quiet. (How could he ask anything when more silence as an answer from Her would hurt more than any reproof ever could?) 

The next time, Caduceus was out of rhythm. Sometimes he slept so long that when he woke, it seemed like the right time, but buds of plants would have grown just a bit more than they should have, and the creeping Darkness that lingered was so much further. He knew he should try to pull himself from sleep when he could, but- he was so alone. And he was trying his best but he was only one person, and if all the others were trying to fix the forest, what use could he be? 

But- he could bake bread. He still fed the slurry of flour and water and those tiny, tiny beings that his father had told him about (even though sometimes that made him sad to think about- if they were beings, could he still eat them? But if they were just helping him out, maybe that was okay- like bees. He liked bees, they always seemed to know so much about their surroundings and he had had so many conversations about where the prettiest flowers were with bees. He thought about going out to talk to them today- before remembering. The bees had gone too. They hadn’t even told him first they’d just left and- well, he should probably start the bread soon if he ever wanted to get out of bed today. Those tiny tiny beings couldn’t leave, right? Bread was a companion.) 

The point was, he fed the baby bread, giving thanks to the Wildmother every step of the way, and then he made bread. When the bread rose, he knew he had done something right. 

When it didn’t- well, now he just stayed in bed, stayed so long the bread was hard and inedible when he awoke. And then he fed it to birds, forgoing meals until the evidence of his failings had flown away like everything else he had ever cared about. 

The bread wasn’t rising.

“Hm, that’s not right,” Caduceus muttered to himself as he poked the lump of dough he had so carefully laid just close enough to the dying embers of the fire. And now he was awake before everyone else, but what was the point? His bread hadn’t risen. He had done something wrong. He had to fix this- somehow. Maybe this had all been a mistake. Maybe he was cursed, and the bread was only the first sign of the things he would inflict on those he now called friends. 

“You’re baking bread? Sweet!!” Beauregard’s voice, raspy with sleep, startled him out of his ever-darkening thoughts. 

“I meant to, but you know how it it- it didn’t rise.” He tried to keep his voice neutral as possible, hoping she wouldn’t realise that this was all down to his failings.

“Oh, so we can have Stockbrot,” Caleb said, voice far too clear for anyone just woken up. “I remember we did that- long ago. It was good though.” 

“Shtuckbrowd? What the fuck Caleb, it’s too early for fancy foreign food.” 

“It’s not fancy! See, you just twist bits around a stick- you know, a Stock- and you cook it over a fire so you have Brot so it’s Stockbrot! Can we use your dough for it, Mr. Caduceus?” 

Blue eyes turned towards Caduceus, and with a snap of a hidden hand, gold eyes stared up at him, more obviously pleading. Caduceus had to smother a smile at the scene in front of him, magical cat and magical human both intent on some simple, unrisen dough. 

“Of course, Mr. Caleb. And we can make sure Frumpkin has some too, he must be hungry.” 

Caleb’s answering smile was brighter than anything else about him, despite the slightly diminished layer of dirt. And so they went about stoking the fire, gathering sticks and finally roasting the bread while Beauregard went about her morning exercise routine. It was new and exciting to Caduceus- and with the others so happy, he hardly thought of the result as a failure. 

Later that evening, Caduceus did something he never dared do before. He decided to Commune with the Wildmother over this insignificant thing, guilt gnawing at him for wasting her time like this. But- he had grown so much closer to her over the months and maybe- maybe she could tell him what to do to get back in her favour. 

Usually he felt warm air and vague answers, but tonight seemed he heard her voice after he asked why she had stopped the bread from rising, clear as anything.

“Oh my child- I never did that. Sometimes, things go wrong.”

“But then- what did I do wrong?” 

“It’s not just you- sometimes, the air is too dry. Sometimes, the water is not as wholesome as it should be. And even though you are one of my favoured followers, my little Sunflower, I cannot always be there when you bake bread, even if it would make me happy.”

The nickname made him smile. “Sunflower, huh?” 

“Your father asked about you a few times. He still calls you that, you know.” 

Caduceus felt as though something was holding him tight around his throat (something he had become regrettably familiar with over the weeks) and wanted nothing more than to ask- where was he? Where were the others? Were they alright? But he knew his three questions were used up. But as he sat there, meditating on what he had learned, the warmth he had loved even as a child washed over him.

“I cannot tell you what you truly wish to know, now or in the future. But I have faith- in you. Grow, my Sunflower. That is all I ever ask of you, and you do it so beautifully” 

Caduceus smiled. He never should have doubted Her. And if he doubted himself sometimes- well, now he knew that She didn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are very appriciated! I'm on tumblr as ohwormhere, come say hi and feel free to suggest anything you'd like to see :)
> 
> Thank you for reading! (also let me know if you think this needs any more tags, I wasn't sure about some things)


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